Right in the feels

Yesterday I was introduced to this interesting article about busyness, within which the following is quoted:

“This busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness. Obviously your life cannot possibly be silly, or trivial, or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked every hour of the day. All this noise, and rush, and stress seem contrived to cover up some fear at the center of our lives.”

This hit me right in the gut.

I’m not super obsessed with being busy, but I do try to keep productive whenever I can. Whenever I’m idle it feel as if I’m wasting this one life I’ve got, so I keep to a tight schedule and try to maximize the learning opportunities. Indeed I’m that asshole who can’t understand people’s infatuation with watching television; those mindless hours are better spent on more creative endeavors, or self improvement. On such occasions I grab a book instead, or edit photographs.

But it’s easy to get trapped into a productivity hamster wheel, where I’m singularly focused on finishing a task as quickly as possible, and moving on to the next. I don’t get satisfaction for the day until the list is finished, which on reflection is not the healthiest thing to do, because I’m completely negating the joy that comes from the process. If life becomes just a series of checkmarks, then you’re forever looking towards the next item to mark off. I keep busy because I’m afraid the music will stop.

Because when the music stops, I die.

My busyness is absolutely a sort of existential reassurance, not as a hedge against emptiness, but rather a hedge against my fear of mortality. Since my youth I’ve had difficulty accepting that all of this is finite, and someday I won’t be walking on this earth. Worse still is the feeling that I won’t know what happens afterwards, an eternal sleep from which there’s no awakening. That final threshold of human life have always had a scary hold onto my psyche, even to this day as a full-fledged adult. The continued practice of stoicism and the acceptance of death sometimes isn’t enough to hold back the demons.

Being busy, does; so I keep at it, but reading that passage above completely pierced through the facade. I’m afraid of death, yet I’m mindlessly barreling through it without stopping to feel alive in the present. That’s not okay. Instead of using busyness as a blanket to hide away the darkness, I need to steer into the slide and confront the pangs of fear whenever it materializes.

Not to say I shall become be slothful and lazy (my default mode, actually), but rather to slow down and really focus on what’s at hand, rather than what’s coming up next. Also, it’s perfectly okay to take a break, and have frivolous moments - especially if it’s spent with family or friends.

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Here today, gone tomorrow.

Fear of what other's think

One of my most crippling anxieties is worrying about other people’s perception of me. Perhaps this is why I never did jive well with social media, a world where the approval and praise of others is the common currency. I’d get really down on myself if someone didn’t reply to my inquiry, or had a negative reaction to one of my posts. To combat this, I’ve largely abandoned all forms of social media, save Twitter, because that is one service I simply cannot quit - far too engrossing.

The same anxiety manifests itself when I’m out in public: I’d want to be invisible, because any chance of drawing a reaction from someone - whatever it may be - has potential to be negative, or embarrassing. A strange paradox existed back when I had the Mazda MX-5 convertible: I seldom put the top down when driving because I felt completely exposed to the outside word. What if someone doesn’t approve of the music I’m listen to? Better turn down the volume.

And then I bought a 911. Yeah, that’ll help; Look at this asshole in a six-figure sports car.

Harboring such social affliction, I sure picked a weird subject to have as a hobby: photography. The task demands that I go out and be amongst others, yet I worry people will see me looking stupid, like crouching down in a yoga pose just to get the correct perspective on a shot. It’s no wonder I prefer to hike in mountains and take landscape photos: there’s no one around to see me. 

In recent years I’ve been much better in dealing with this anxiety, though being amongst large crowds at events still fills me with dread. But I know that fearing what other people think of me is absolute nonsense: no one notices me, nor would they care what I’m doing; I’m not special at all. People generally have a live-and-let-live attitude unless someone’s in danger of physical harm, so my anxiety is unfounded. I can easily go on with what I’m doing and no one will blink an eye.

Easiest said than done, obviously, but it has to be done nonetheless. Stoic philosophy dictates that one shouldn’t concern with what they cannot control; other’s perception of me is squarely in that category of incontrollable. I can’t change their thoughts, only my own, and I should be 100 percent focused on living my life as I desire it.

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I'm a silhouette, chasing rainbows on my own.

Don't let fear stop the great

Yesterday I talked about getting a motorcycle for commuting to and from work. As is my wont when it comes to these sort of things, I dove way deep into research. As mentioned, the positives of owning a bike is obvious: low purchasing and running cost, the ability to filter through traffic, great gas mileage, and ease of parking. 

As with anything in life, there are potential negatives, too. I live in an apartment with a gated communal parking lot, so the bike will expose to the weather elements, and more worryingly, potential thieves. Any two men (or burly women) can simply pick up the bike and load it onto the back of a truck. No amount of locking device can foil this simple act of plain physics. 

Naturally I agonized over this prospective deal-breaker, spending hours reading up on theft deterrents and best practices. It seems the consensus is that if you rather not worry about your bike getting stolen all the time, it's best to not buy one at all unless you've got secured parking (i.e. a garage). At one point I gave up on the idea of motorcycle ownership entirely because I'm the type of person who tend to have anxiety about these things. 

But then I realized that this is all incredibly stupid: why should I let fear - and the potential actions of people I cannot control - dictate my decisions? As someone who loves cars, getting into motorcycles is a natural extension and something to experience in life. I shouldn't let the possibility of theft deter me from checking that off to my list. Practically anything we do in life carries negative potentialities so either we can stay home, be a loser and do nothing, or ignore what we can't control and get after it. 

It won't be easy to not be obsessive compulsive about people stealing my bike, but I've got to learn to accept it. The best antidote is insurance: just as I do with my expensive camera gear, the bike will be insured for theft. I'd be made financially whole should some guy decides he wants my motorcycle more than me. I should let that be my peace of mind and focus instead completely on enjoying the ownership experience.

Mustn't let fear stop the great. 

Walking on the roof garden. 

Kevin Smith on dying

On the bus ride to work today I listened to the Joe Rogan podcast with guest Kevin Smith, who recently had an heart-attack scare. Towards the end of the three-hour episode Kevin Smith talked about his near-brush with death. He said for a guy who’s been scared of dying his whole life, he was surprisingly calm and okay when he was lying in the hospital not knowing whether he’ll make it out. Life is a journey and when the journey is over it’s nothing to be afraid of or lamented, but rather be glad: people are happy when they accomplish things and life is literally the longest and biggest thing we get to do. 

Kevin Smith talked about the feelings he experienced being okay with dying was surprisingly the same his mother felt that time when she went into cardiac arrest, was clinically dead for a few moments, and came back. She remarked that being on the “other side” for that brief time was the ultimate sense of freedom: this life she’s toiled so hard through is finally over and what's left was absolute peace. 

As someone who’ve battled the fear of death demon for years, I was shocked to hear a guy like Kevin Smith, with his tremendous success, can harbor that same fear. The wisdom I gained from his story is that in life if you accomplish many great things, get after it with gusto, and leave no regrets behind, that life well lived will make death spectacularly easy to face. Kevin Smith felt okay with possibly dying from the heart attack because he was satisfied with all the awesome things he had done.

Leaving this human world is the reward at the end of the marathon of life - even if it’s cut short by disease or other circumstances.

I’m afraid to die because I want to live, because there’s many things I’ve yet to do. Fear of dying is a self-fulfilling prophecy: the more you try to avoid it by living super passively and avoiding everything difficult, the more that fear lingers and eats within. The way to make death acceptable is to live a life worthy of it: try new things, chase dreams, go after what you desire, be the hero.

To put it another way: is the things you’ve done and accomplish in life worth dying for?  

Up and up we go, less and less we can afford.